


hold on till the war is done

by OldEmeraldEye



Series: Dice Fic Challenge [7]
Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Abandonment, Food, Gen, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26729530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldEmeraldEye/pseuds/OldEmeraldEye
Summary: They rescue themselves. The only people that they can trust are each other.
Relationships: Gretel & Hansel (Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters)
Series: Dice Fic Challenge [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871956
Kudos: 3





	hold on till the war is done

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt weapon

No one comes to find them in the forest. Not when they are abandoned, and not when the witch traps them. They learn a lesson from that, just as they had learned from having no way to find home.

They are not rescued. They rescue themselves. Or rather, Gretel does, and Hansel helps her with the last push to close the oven door. That is the way of things. Hansel provides the stories and flights of fancy - like their ill-fated trail of breadcrumbs - and Gretel the hard, ordinary work that Hansel's thought shortens.

He always did need looking after. But she can't blame him, with him being stuck in a cage and fattened for slaughter these last weeks. If she'd had anyone to call on, she might have trusted him to stay alive while she set out to get help. But there had been no one but the two of them, so she had stayed and kept him alive herself.

He lives, and she lives, and the witch does not.

Free at last of bush and scrub and forest, they find a town at end of a rutted dirt road. They find a barn to rest in and barter passage homewards on a cart the next morning in exchange for the tale of their captivity and small bits of hauling along the way. The carter has children, he tells them. So had theirs, they do not reply.

They return to their parents home to find that their luck has changed. Not overly much - they have no fairy gold or jewels to show for their trial. No parents welcome them back. But a stallholder at the local week's market tuts at their story of witch and wanderings, and slips an extra turnip into Hansel's basket, and they have enough for the two of them to live on.

There is something dark in the shadow of the eyes that watch them leave. Hansel makes no mention and Gretel makes note. It was not the witch, after all, who had stranded them in the depths of the woods.

She is no great cook, not with only bread and scavenged herbs and turnips to work with. But the knife she found sits easily in her hand, and Gretel'd dragged it against the whetstone until the edge gleamed.

For now, they are safe and soon to be fed. So she takes a smooth, steady breath, keeps an eye on the door, and brings it down clean.


End file.
